


Just can't help

by Laramie



Series: Things you said [18]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 07:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6695431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laramie/pseuds/Laramie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(falling in love with you)</p><p>Do I win the award for cheesiest title?</p><p>When Jimmy came back from work, Thomas was packing his clothes into a big suitcase.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just can't help

**July 1936**

When Jimmy came back from work, Thomas was packing his clothes into a big suitcase. Surprised, Jimmy leaned against the doorframe of their bedroom and watched. Underpants were neatly folded, ties tightly rolled and shirts carefully tucked away. Thomas's movements were slow, as though he was weary, but still as controlled as ever.

"You're not usually this late," Jimmy observed after a few minutes of his silent show (the best bit was when Thomas bent over to retrieve his boots from the bottom of the wardrobe).

"Long day," Thomas replied, the tiredness clear in his voice. "I couldn't face it earlier."

Jimmy watched his partner fasten the straps on his old suitcase, debating with himself. Eventually, he said: "Don't forget your wellingtons."

A quizzical frown was the response. "We're going to Cornwall in July. I know we're in Britain, but even so - I think we can count on ground we won't drown in."

"Just take them," Jimmy pressed, feeling his face heat up.

"I don't want to have to lug them on the train, darling." The testiness creeping into Thomas's voice - and the fact that he had called Jimmy 'darling' - indicated that tiredness was draining his patience.

" _Please_ , Thomas." Jimmy pleaded with his eyes, knowing that it would be so much easier if he just _explained_ , but feeling too silly or too unprepared to do so. It felt like there was a trap door on his throat, keeping the words back. "I'll carry 'em, even."

Thomas regarded him with curiosity and confusion. "Why?"

Jimmy shifted uncomfortably. _Tell him, tell him_ , he pushed himself. But he couldn't. "Just promise me you'll take 'em."

After another moment's hesitation, Jimmy won himself a resigned sigh. "Come give me a kiss and I'll promise."

-

"It's wellington day," Jimmy said while they were still in bed at the seafront B&B the following Wednesday. They hadn't made any plans for the day, other than going out for dinner, and it felt like the right time.

Thomas raised an intrigued eyebrow; Jimmy still hadn't told him why exactly he needed wellingtons, despite Thomas's initial attempts to get it out of him.

Once they had washed, dressed and breakfasted, Jimmy led the way through two bus journeys and a short but very steep walk. They turned off from the road and strolled side-by-side down a track bordered by only a few detached houses, Jimmy starting to feel a bit nervous and Thomas looking around him with interest. Over the hedge to their right, they could just about glimpse the sea, separated from them by just a couple of miles of fields and the odd wind-twisted tree. As they progressed down the track, the wind lessened. Soon they reached the shelter of the trees in the wooded area they entered as the track narrowed to a rocky footpath.

From here it was another mile or so, through the woodland in the valley. Now they kept climbing up again; Jimmy could hear his and Thomas's heavy breathing as a lower undertone to trilling birdsong, creaking braches and the tinkling stream. The warm sun filtered through the leaves, making a dappled effect on the slate Jimmy stepped across.

To Jimmy's relief, Thomas hadn't asked any more questions about Jimmy's mysteriousness, even though he must have been burning with curiosity. The stream that had wound along close to the path at the beginning of the walk had been a clue, though Thomas didn't know it. They had left it below them now as they climbed, but soon, frustratingly, they were on their way down again. It couldn't be helped; Jimmy knew of no other way to reach their destination.

When they reached the bottom of the valley again, Jimmy stopped. He waited for Thomas to draw up next to him - the path had been too narrow to walk abreast - and breathed deeply. They were now standing on a mass of flat or angular pebbles, over which the shallow stream burbled. All through this wide section of the stream, there were piles of the pebbles and pieces of slate that people had made. Ahead, a tree Jimmy couldn't name leaned gracefully across the water, its leafless branches decorated with bright pieces of ribbon which waltzed in the breeze. Beyond the gentle sound of the stream, there was a deep roaring sound, which had been growing steadily louder the closer they got to this place.

"This way," Jimmy said, without looking at Thomas. He splashed into the shallows, only an inch or two deep at first. They passed a thick fallen tree; it had been down for long enough to have lost its bark, and into the splits in the wood had been lodged dozens of pennies and ha'pennies, all in rows.

"What are the coins about?" Thomas asked from behind Jimmy.

Jimmy turned to answer: "People stick money in and make a wish."

Thomas regarded the log thoughtfully, then dug into his pocket and managed to find a space on the old tree to push a ha'penny into. Jimmy waited as Thomas stood looking at the gleam of metal against the smooth wood, but he didn't ask what Thomas's wish had been, if he had made one at all. It didn't feel right, somehow. Even speaking here didn't quite feel right, almost as though they were in church.

Jimmy turned and waded on through water which quickly deepened to half a foot or more. There were decorations in improbable places, such as on a narrow lip on the cliff face stretching up before them, where there rested a rose in a jar, not far from a stone wrapped in ribbon and hanging from a tree branch. And everywhere, there were names, dates and messages scratched or painted onto the flat faces of the slate.

Thomas drew alongside as they crossed the slippery pebbles, water rushing over their feet, so it was together that they rounded the natural rock corner to reveal the source of the roaring sound.

From high, high above their heads, a narrow stream of water barrelled out of a split in the cliff and cascaded a hundred feet down into a shallow pool, before slipping out through a large, perfectly circular window in a strange outcrop of rock and making its second descent of five feet or so into the plunge pool in front of Thomas and Jimmy.

"Wow," Thomas said quietly.

"People have been coming here for hundreds of years. It was sacred ages before Christianity showed up," Jimmy said, his renewed nerves making him babble. This was it; he would have to explain now, or he never would.

"So you're a Pagan now, is that it?" Thomas asked with a teasing lilt to his voice. They were both staring at the waterfall; it was hard not to.

"No!" Jimmy said, frustrated by his own inability to articulate his thoughts. He wanted to share it, but it was so _private_ …

Thomas moved behind him and wrapped his arms around Jimmy's waist. He pressed in close and murmured into Jimmy's ear, his lips brushing the skin. "I bet we could make love under that waterfall and no one would ever know."

The blood seemed to rush to Jimmy's cock just as quickly as the image shot into his brain. Thomas sitting, naked, with his back to the rock, the cold water in the plunge pool up to his belly button and his hair wet and wild. Jimmy on his lap, surrounded by freezing water but filled with Thomas's heat as they moved together, always kissing, with the falls plunging between and over them.

Jimmy closed his eyes, concentrating on the sensation of Thomas's mouth kissing his ear, his neck. "Not now," he murmured," covering Thomas's hands on his stomach with his own.

In the end, he twisted around in Thomas's arms, gripped his bicep with one hand and with the other pointed silently at one of the dozens of messages scratched onto slate that had been left in the area. Since he knew the words by heart, Jimmy only glanced at it before turning back to watch Thomas reading it.

_F+J Kent_

_d. 1916_

_Love always_

_Jimmy_

Thomas gazed at the inscription for far longer than it took to read it, his thumb stroking at the small of Jimmy's back.

"It's your parents," he said at last, his voice sounding choked.

"I wanted you to meet them," Jimmy finally confessed. "I put that here the year after they died. I've only been back once or twice since but it feels more them than that gra- that churchyard. We came here while we were on holiday once. Mum kept saying she wanted to lie in the river and have her hair fly out like a mermaid, but it were bloody freezing and dad wouldn't let her. Said he'd brought her to enjoy herself, not drown herself."

"Do you miss them?" Thomas asked.

Jimmy wasn't sure he knew how to miss anyone. He thought fondly of people, of course; but was that missing them? Twenty years on from his parents' deaths, Jimmy had been without them for longer than he had ever known them. And, at his age, _most_ people were living without their parents.

After a substantial pause, Jimmy admitted: "I don't know."

They stayed with their feet at the edge of the plunge pool for a long while, connected to all that power of the surging water.

"Thank you for all this," Thomas said. Jimmy kissed him briefly on the lips.

When they finally went on their way, they left a new message behind them.

_JK+TB_

_1936_

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired and loosely based on St Nectan's Waterfall in Cornwall, but I have shamelessly altered or invented details to suit my own purposes.
> 
> Photo credit: celticmystery.co.uk
> 
> If you enjoyed, please drop me a comment!


End file.
